OCZ releases much cheaper, slightly faster SSDs

OCZ's new core line slashes cost on 2.5" SSDs while maintaining a relatively …

The SSD market is getting more and more crowded by the month, and a recent announcement by OCZ continues the trend. The technology firm recently announced its new "Core" line of 2.5" Solid State Disks, which have strong performance numbers and large sizes while slashing costs by at least 30 percent. Retail availability will follow shortly, and OCZ CEO Ryan Peterson has told Ars that a sizable number of OEMs will offer the new drives in laptops.

The new Core SSDs come in standard 2.5" form factors, and are available in sizes of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB, costing $169, $259, and $479 respectively. OCZ calls that a 50 percent reduction in cost per gigabyte, but it's more like a 30 percent drop from a preexisting Super Talent drive in the 120GB range. The new line claims sustained read speeds of 120-140MBps, and sustained write speeds of 80-90MBps. This makes them far from the fastest available SSDs, but somewhere in the pack, and certainly much faster than 2.5" hard disks.

Although OCZ cites reliability as one of the key driving points for the new series of drives, it uses Multi-Level-Cell NAND Flash, which has a lower speed, reliability, and longevity than Single-Level-Cell Flash. Laptop-targeted SSDs frequently use MLC, but server devices almost always use SLC for its superior durability. Peterson has told Ars that MLC is advancing and concerns about reliability have been obviated by new manufacturing advances and firmware developments, presumably including advanced wear-leveling algorithms. In OCZ's vision, MLC will dominate and "SLC will go away" as technology matures, and even the server space will adopt MLC. This vision is bolstered by Samsung's recent decision to switch a major SSD line from SLC to MLC. Indeed, Peterson said, the new MLC drives are already significantly more reliable than hard disks. The new drives claim a 1.5-million-hour MTBF, higher than any other commercially available SSD, but MTBF numbers are of disputed utility, so real reliability figures will have to wait on field testing.

The new product capitalizes on falling prices for NAND to push SSDs within a factor-of-five price difference from 7200RPM laptop hard disks of the same capacity. Expect to see this figure fall rapidly as NAND continues to grow cheaper. SSDs have come a long way, and it looks increasingly likely they're going to see strong adoption in notebook PCs and elsewhere in the relatively near future.